ABSTRACT
Disturbances of the chemical senses are frequent. It has been estimated that hundreds of thousands of patients present to medical practitioners each year with complaints of smell dysfunction (1-4). The high prevalence of olfactory disorders becomes clearer from results of population-based studies. In one such investigation, 24% of individuals aged 53 to 97 were found to have impaired olfactory function (5), whereas another such study showed a prevalence of 19% among individuals aged 20 and older (6). Other work indicates that at least 5% of the general population has a severe olfactory deficit in the sense of anosmia (Table 1) (7).
